Sunday, May 6, 2018

How Google Plans To Use AI To Reinvent The $3 Trillion US Healthcare Industry

From CB Insights:

Google is betting that the future of healthcare is going to be
structured data and AI. The company is applying AI to disease detection,
new data infrastructure, and potentially insurance. In this report we
explore Google's many healthcare initiatives and areas of potential
future expansion.

Google has always seen itself as more than a search and advertising company.
Now it’s turning its focus to healthcare, betting that its AI prowess
can create a powerful new paradigm for the detection, diagnosis, and
treatment of disease.

In short, Google seems to be going after the healthcare space from every possible angle.
For example, did you know that Google has a project to release
sterilized mosquitoes to control the spread of infectious disease? Or
that the company has started a limited commercial rollout of its
diabetes management program? Or that it appears to be exploring
insurance?
In this analysis, we dive deep into how Google is pushing healthcare forward with a focus on data and AI, including:

The specific disease areas where Google is studying diagnostics and
management — including diabetes, Parkinson’s Disease, and heart disease,
among others

How Google is rebuilding the healthcare data infrastructure layer to potentially become the new data pipes for health giants

Possible areas of expansion, including hardware for providers, insurance and more

How Google could make eventually money off its many disparate healthcare bets

Obstacles between where the company is today and where it’s trying to go

Note: For simplicity we use “Google” as shorthand for the larger
Alphabet company, under which many of these healthcare initiatives fall.
We explain the Alphabet structure below.

Google’s structure & AI advantage

GOOGLE PRIORITIZES AI

As Google enters healthcare, it’s leaning heavily on its expertise in
AI. Health data is getting digitized and structured, from a new
electronic record standard to imaging to DNA sequencing. Google is both
helping speed up this process by creating new means of ingesting health
data and betting that it can use AI to make sense of the data quickly
and potentially more accurately than current methods.
Among the big 5 tech giants (Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Google,
Amazon), Google emphasizes its progress on machine learning much more
than the rest.

As software, and more specifically artificial intelligence, becomes a
differentiating factor in the healthcare space, Google is
well-positioned.

The company is doubling down on the number of research papers it
publishes, opening more AI research centers around the world, and
developing its own chips and hardware dedicated to running AI/ML
processes. In addition, Google is the most active investor/ acquirer of
AI companies among big tech companies, scooping up talent and building
relationships with up-and-coming AI applications....